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Report: Google fires engineer who leaked raise memo
After a memo in which the company announced a 10 percent pay raise for everyone leaked out, Google reportedly fires the leaker.
If you don't want anyone to know about something you've done, then you shouldn't do it.
Such words, first offered by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, might just occasionally be revolving around the Google compound this morning. Word has leaked out that the engineer who leaked a memo announcing that every Google employee would get a 10 percent pay raise has been fired.
According to CNN Money, Google took the draconian action and announced it to its staff. Visual evidence of this announcement is, as yet, strangely lacking.
While Google has declined to comment to several news outlets about this report, it might, to some, seem like an odd thing to do. It's hardly likely that giving more than 23,000 people a raise could be kept secret. Normally, it's hard for one person to keep their good news quite this confidential.
Imagine if just one lover of a Google employee, happy that there would now be a new kitchen, Lexus, or, perhaps, vast mansion, had revealed it on his or her, say, Facebook page. Surely the vast left brains at Google might have imagined that possibility.
Perhaps Google is upset that the actual official memo got leaked. Perhaps the sheer official nature of the leak might have affected its stock price for an hour or two.
But perhaps, too, it's as well to echo the words of Google's sudden and formidable rival, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, that there really is no such thing as privacy.
Some might suspect that Google wasn't really fond of the allegedly fired engineer anyway. Some might wonder whether the leak gave the company a cheery excuse to show him or her the door. Some might also wonder whether the leaker might have wondered whether his e-mail might disturb some of the powers that are. Especially as one might imagine that it was rather easily traceable.
Perhaps, though, this is just a case of an engineer who got excited. About something that wasn't engineering. And now he or she might simply have to take that job offer at Facebook. You know, the Facebook that says there's no privacy.
